Patrick Bowles Letters (VMF121), 1957-1960 | MSS Manuscripts

Patrick Bowles was an expatriate South African writer, editor, and translator. Richard Woodward Seaver (December 31, 1926-January 6, 2009) was an American translator, editor and publisher whose work at Merlin and Grove Press was instrumental in defying censorship in the mid-century United States.

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Scope and Contents: Consists of seven letters from Patrick Bowles (1927-1995) to Richard 'Dick' Seaver (1926-2009). At the time these letters were written, Bowles was living between Paris, Berlin, and London. A masterful chronicler of events large and small, Bowles wrote to Seaver in high literary style, commenting on his own writing, impressions of middle Europe and recent visits with his collaborators on the literary journal Merlin, Alexander Trocchi and Christopher Logue. In addition, Bowles discusses Samuel Beckett, whose novel Molloy he helped to translate from its original French; Seaver would play an instrumental role in publishing this work in the United States under the aegis of Grove Press.